Oak Among Pines. Yosemite Valley, California. November 1, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A solitary oak with autumn foliage against the backdrop of a dense pine forest in Yosemite Valley near El Capitan Meadow.

As I was photographing the brilliant fall colors of meadow and oak trees in El Capitan Meadow in early November I noticed this solitary oak apart from the other oaks, along the edge of the meadow and with a recently-burned pine forest behind it.

Update: Someone pointed out that these “recently-burned” trees look pretty darn healthy and wondered what I meant. If you look closely you can see that the bases of the trees are, in fact, scorched. In Yosemite National Park, a “fire management” policy is pursued in place of a “fire suppression” policy. Decades ago fire in the forest was regarded as a bad thing and the enemy of healthy forests. More recently it has become apparent that fire is actually part of the life of a healthy forest – and that letting a forest go too long without fire is actually a very bad thing.

This has been proven in many places, including Yosemite. Several very destructive fires have almost completely destroyed some forest areas that were too long “protected” from fire – and as a result the excessive fuel that built up led to tremendously hot and destructive fires that completely killed off old trees. In a healthy forest, the more typical fire may burn the ground plants – many of which are adapted to recover quickly – but it rarely is hot enough to kill off the old, large trees.

Recognizing this, the park service now allows most natural fires to take their natural course, sometimes burning slowly (with supervision and “management”) for weeks or months. Fires are intentionally set in The Valley for this same purpose, and the result is very healthy forests like the one seen behind the oak tree – bearing some signs of past low level fires, but otherwise in very good shape.

keywords: oak; tree; leaves; foliage; autumn; fall; season; color; yellow; gold; brown; bright; solitary; alone; single; pine; forest; trunk; grass; meadow; el capitan; yosemite; valley; national park; california; usa; sierra; nevada; mountains; scenic; travel; landscape; nature; stock